Taking Down Dr. Oz

I briefly mentioned Dr. Oz in my recent post about NY Med (and the healthcare social media firing). It’s clear to anyone watching the show that Dr. Oz is there for the celebrity factor and not for the actual medical work. He’s always “partnered” with another cardiologist who provides the actual patient care. Of course, I don’t really care too much that he’s on it or not. If it gives them a boost in ratings, good. I like the show.

However, I don’t know a single doctor that likes Dr. Oz and I know many of them who hate Dr. Oz. With this in mind, I found this interview with a medical student whose trying to “take down” Dr. Oz quite interesting. Here’s a short take on what this med student is doing:

Last year, Mazer brought a policy before the Medical Society of the State of New York—where Dr. Oz is licensed—requesting that they consider regulating the advice of famous physicians in the media. His idea: Treat health advice on TV in the same vein as expert testimony, which already has established guidelines for truthfulness.

Although, this quote is really powerful as well, “DR. OZ HAS SOMETHING LIKE 4-MILLION VIEWERS A DAY. THE AVERAGE PHYSICIAN DOESN’T SEE A MILLION PATIENTS IN THEIR LIFETIME.”

This is absolutely one of the problems with social media and other medium like television. The person with the biggest voice doesn’t always have the best information. In fact, sometimes the wrong information is the best way to grow an audience. What’s popular is not always what’s right.

Mazer in his interview highlights the biggest problem with some of the things that Dr. Oz says. The movement in healthcare has largely been towards evidence based medicine. I think that movement will only grow stronger as we can prove the effectiveness of care even better. However, many of the things on Dr. Oz’s show go contrary to evidence based medicine. This leaves the patient-doctor relationship at a cross roads when a patient chooses to follow something they’ve seen on TV versus the advice of the doctor (even if the doctor is on the side of evidence).

Dr. Oz aside, the same principle applies to other information patients might find on the internet. Many doctors would like to just brush this aside and say that patients should “trust” them since there’s bad information on the internet or there’s a bigger picture. That might work in the short term, but won’t last long term.

Long term doctors are going to have to take a collaborative approach with patients. As patients we just have to be careful that we don’t take it too far. Collaboration means that the patient needs to be collaborative as well.

The other way for doctors to battle the misinformation out there is to provide quality sources of trusted information. One way this will happen is on the physician website. Instead of being a glorified yellow page ad, the physician website is going to have to do more to engage and educate patients. That’s part of the opportunity and vision for Physia. It’s an exciting time to be in healthcare…if you like change.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

3 Comments

  • I’m certainly no fan of Dr. Oz either. But as with all medical advice, the media, and the internet… it’s “caveat emptor” — “let the buyer beware”.

    As to: “The movement in healthcare has *largely* been towards evidence based medicine.” — It’s hard to miss the qualifier. I might choose instead to say *somewhat*.

    One should judiciously evaluate any subject using “consider-the-source” and “follow-the-money” criteria when considering its veracity. This applies no less to the medical establishment than to those government agencies which support the pharmaceutical and the agricultural industries, all of whom have largely bypassed real science — witness the war on certain fats, and the cluelessness regarding obesity and nutrition.

    I run a web site, and we always try to “provide quality sources of trusted information”, but in the end, its “you can lead a horse to water…”. And just because you read it on WebMD or Kaiser… it ain’t necessarily so. Caveat Emptor.

  • I think we should hit Dr. Oz with a healthy dose of Meaningful Use – that would straighten him out. I liken all of it to expert books/testimony/blogs etc, written by the likes of Jenny McCarthy and others who “claim to know”… There is SO much out there, that if this med student were to win his case, it would be quite a slippery slope indeed!

  • I believe that If it was not allowed to make any ads for MDs or drugs in the USA, Dr. Oz show might be called unethical show easily. But, you can see many MDs ads on the newspapers, boards, or drugs on TV everyday. You also can see many lawyer ads on TV everyday, who wanted to take down MDs. So, from this side of the window, this fame and popularity of Dr. Oz can be accepted as reasonable. Moreover, nobody can ignore the increase of the awareness of public about healthy eating by the show. On the other hand, the show presents many products, which are as miracle products for long and healthy lives. The public should be repeatedly warned that these products need to have more scientific evidence to be declared as ‘miracle healers’.

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